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Because of the similarities in morphology of feminine and masculine grammatical gender inflections in Indo-European languages, there is a theory that in an early stage, the Proto-Indo-European language had only two grammatical genders: "animate" and "inanimate/neuter"; the most obvious difference being that inanimate/neuter nouns used the same form for the nominative, vocative, and accusative ...
The gender distinction in Ojibwe is not a masculine/feminine contrast, but is rather between animate and inanimate.Animate nouns are generally living things, and inanimate ones generally nonliving things, although that is not a simple rule because of the cultural understanding as to whether a noun possesses a "spirit" or not (generally, if it can move, it possesses a "spirit").
The animate–inanimate opposition for the masculine gender applies in the singular, and the personal–impersonal opposition, which classes animals along with inanimate objects, applies in the plural. (A few nouns denoting inanimate things are treated grammatically as animate and vice versa.) The manifestations of the differences are as follows:
There are about 80 inanimate nouns which are in the animate class, including nouns denoting heavenly objects (moon, rainbow), metal objects (hammer, ring), edible plants (sweet potato, pea), and non-metallic objects (whistle, ball). Many of the exceptions have a round shape, and some can be explained by the role they play in Zande mythology.
t. e. In linguistics, possession[1][2] is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which (the possessor) in some sense possesses (owns, has as a part, rules over, etc.) the referent of the other (the possessed). Possession may be marked in many ways, such as simple juxtaposition of nouns, possessive case ...
Georgian - different verbs are used in various cases (to put, to take, to have etc.), while referring to animate or inanimate objects. Many Native American languages, including most languages of the Algic, Siouan [8] [9] and Uto-Aztecan language families, as well as isolates such as Mapudungun; Middle Korean; Sumerian; Chukotko-Kamchatkan
The cut off point may not be the same in all languages. An example is Hindi where the marking of objects is affected by animacy. Animate objects are marked with accusative case, irrespective of whether the argument is definite or not. In contrast, if an inanimate object is marked for the accusative case, the object must be definite. [13]
For people and animate objects, it generally refers to something alive that has passed away. Items that are destroyed, beyond repair or lost forever tend to be inanimate objects. [14] All nouns, whether animate or inanimate, are marked with the suffixes -i or -y (-ay) /aj/ in the singular and -uk or -ug (-uk) /-ək/ in the plural. With the same ...